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East Finchley Cemetery is a cemetery and crematorium in East End Road, East Finchley in the London Borough of Barnet. The facilities are owned and managed by the City of Westminster.
Contents
History and characteristics
The St Marylebone Burial Board purchased 47 acres (0.19 km2) of Newmarket Farm in 1854; and the cemetery, then known as St Marylebone Cemetery, was laid out by architects Barnet & Brick Ltd. the following year with an Anglican Grade II listed chapel. Principal features are two Lebanon Cedar trees planted on the front lawn. The crematorium was opened in 1937.
Due to local government reorganisation, the cemetery was managed by the Metropolitan Borough of St Marylebone – from 1900; and became the responsibility of the City of Westminster in 1965, when the cemetery became known by its current name. The cemetery contains about 22,000 interments; and remains open for burials.
The cemetery was awarded a Green Flag Award in 2007, 2008 and 2009. It is also a Site of Local Importance for Nature Conservation.
The nearest London Underground station is East Finchley, on the Northern line.
The cemetery became a point of controversy in the early nineties when the then Leader of Westminster City Council and Councillor Hartley wanted the Cemetery to be sold. The cemetery also included a considerable amount of land being used at the time for plant propagation for horticultural use throughout the City of Westminster; it also provided housing for the Cemetery Keeper. After much political argument at Council Meetings and against the advice of the Chief Officers concerned, the Cemetery was sold for three pence.
Within a short period of time the cemetery was then sold by a Westminster estate agent for one million pounds. It was then sold on to an off-shore company for three million pounds. How the management of burials came back to W.C.C. is not known.
The cemetery contains five structures listed on the National Heritage List for England. The monuments to Harry Ripley, Thomas Tate, Peter Nicol Russell, and the mausoleum of Algernon Borthwick, 1st Baron Glenesk and his wife and son are all listed Grade II, as is the crematorium and chapel.
Notable burials
War graves
There are 75 Commonwealth service war burials of World War I in the cemetery, most in the War Graves plot in the cemetery's north-west corner that was set aside for military burials in 1916, and 79 of World War II (including two unidentified British soldiers). A Screen Wall memorial, behind the Cross of Sacrifice, records the names of the 20 Second World War casualties who were cremated at the St Marylebone Crematorium. There are also special memorials to eight World War I servicemen whose graves could not be marked by headstones.